Avalon is host tonight, and his guest is an old army buddy named Colonel Samuel Davenheim. While Avalon has moved onto patent law, Colonel Davenheim has remained a military trial lawyer. He's able to correctly identify each member of the club, based on what Avalon told him about them. Halsted recites his limerick, and the discussion tangents to the ways unconscious thought can influence conscious actions.
After dinner, no-one is specifically appointed to grill the colonel, but discussion shifts to his interrogation problem. He has identified a sergeant and a private who are involved in a conspiracy to sell military equipment on the black market. He'd like to be able to arrest the officers involved, but only Private Klotz knows who gave them the orders. When Colonel Davenheim tries to interrogate him, he simply denies the accusation and hums "Yankee Doodle".
This story has been reprinted in The Best Mysteries Of Isaac Asimov (1986).
This work provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptation Distillation: In-Universe, Halsted is adapting The Iliad into limericks, one book at a time. The fifth book goes as follows:In courage and skill well ahead,
Into battle went brave Diomed.
Even gods were his quarries,
And the war-loving Ares
He struck down and left nearly for dead. - Dreadful Musician: When Avalon prepares to sing "Yankee Doodle", Rubin objects. The narrator claims Avalon's singing is comparable to an oyster, so Avalon instead recites the first eight lines of the song.
- Driving Question: Why does Private Klotz hum "Yankee Doodle"?
- Fairplay Whodunnit:
- The clues are all presented during the grilling, and the audience can deduce what might be happening by the time Henry requests permission to interrupt, assuming they know the full song of "Yankee Doodle".
- (Conversed Trope) Rubin points out a couple of elements mystery stories should not include, such as supernatural forces, tarantulas, and undetectable poisons.
- Fancy Dinner: The Black Widowers meet every month at the Milano, a fancy restaurant in New York City, tonight's dinner begins with bread rolls as appetizers, and moves to veal parmesan.
- Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue: The Milano itself is hardly described, but the characters get relatively clear description in both appearance and personality, by having Colonel Davenheim attempt to identify each member based on Avalon's description of his friends. The only member missing is Henry, because Avalon claims he couldn't do justice to any sort of description.
- Framing Device: The Fancy Dinner presents the audience with a setting and characters to solve a mystery about an interrogation suspect (Private Klotz) who keeps humming "Yankee Doodle" whenever he's questioned about his actions with Sergeant Faber.
- Freudian Slip:
- Colonel Davenheim accidentally calls a friend Faber instead of Florence.
- Private Klotz keeps humming "Yankee Doodle" while under interrogation, and doesn't realize it.
- Fun with Homophones:
- Father stands in for Faber.
- Gooden stands in for Goodwin.
- The Jeeves: Henry's timing tonight seems to cause shifts in conversation.
- Language Drift: The Black Widowers discuss how change in the meaning of words have made nonsense out of the eponymous song.
- Living Lie Detector: Colonel Davenheim has questioned many people over the years, and claims to be able to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. He admits, however, that it cannot be used as legal evidence, so he's trying to find the next link in the conspiracy so that he can convince them to confess more evidence.
- Literary Allusion Title: The title refers to the song "Yankee Doodle", which plays an important role in the plot.
- Mr. Smith: Colonel Davenheim attempts to Invoke this trope when he asks if he can use false names for the people involved, but Gonzalo points out that he's already used the proper name for one of them.
- The Namesake: The title is a reference to an old American song, which the person Colonel Davenheim is questioning has been humming unconsciously.
- Painful Rhyme: The reason Halsted hasn't shared any new The Iliad limericks is because he's been having trouble with the rhyming of book five. He points out that out of the three options for the character's name, 'Diomedes' rhymes with 'Wheaties', 'Diomed' rhymes with 'shy-a-bed', and 'Tydeides' rhymes with 'di-dies' (or, using a Cockney accent, with 'lydies'). Drake suggests 'ascites', but Halsted refuses. His current version of the limerick rhymes 'Diomed' with 'ahead' and 'dead' by stressing the first and last syllables of the name.
- Phone-In Detective: Henry is able to roughly guess the name of Private Klotz's Captain by listening to the Widowers speak about his persistent humming of "Yankee Doodle".
- Shout-Out: The song "Yankee Doodle" plays an important role in the plot, even giving this story its title.
- With Friends Like These...: In this story, the members repeatedly share good-natured insults with each other, mocking skills and appearance.
- Writer's Block: In-Universe, Halsted admits he has been having trouble with adapting the fifth book of The Iliad into a limerick.
